The ocean is filled with creatures that may seem strange to human eyes. But every now and then these strangers appear from the depths on dry ground. Here are ten cases when these ocean animals came ashore in 2020 (or were spied on).
It is rare to see a giant squid (Architeuthis dux), people noticed when they washed ashore in Cape Town, South Africa on 7 June. This squid looks very eccentric – their eight arms and two tentacles are covered with toothed suckers with powerful suction; they have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom (measuring 1 foot or 30 centimeters in diameter); and they can reach up to 18 meters in length.
This particular giant squid is now in the collections of the Iziko Museums of South Africa, and its DNA can help researchers determine if there are just one or many species of giant squid deep under the waves.
Read more: Stunningly intact giant squid wash ashore in South Africa
7-armed octopus (where is the 8th arm?)
When a man spotted a ‘red ball’ on the rocky shore of an island near Seattle, he took some photos that sparked a friendly debate over the animal’s identity. The clot was clearly a cephalopod (a group that includes squid, octopus, squid and nautilus), but what species was it?
The scientific consensus has been with the seven-armed octopus (Haliphron atlanticus), a deep-water animal that does not usually swim in Washington’s cold coastal waters.
Despite its peculiar name, the octopus has more than seven arms. In males, the eighth arm is used during mating, and the rest of the time it remains modestly hidden in a pocket near its right eye.
Read more: Bright ‘red ball’ washes ashore in Washington. It could be a 7-armed octopus.
9-armed octopus becomes almost dinner
After a seaweed farmer caught octopuses in Japan in a trap, he took them home for his mother to cook. But just after she threw one into a cooking pot, she realized it had nine arms, and so she fished it out.
How did this octopus get nine arms? Just as lizards can regrow tails, octopuses can regrow their arms. Sometimes the regeneration process flutters and the regrowth arm gets a shoot or the ninth arm. Sometimes these flubs can happen over and over again – one octopus allegedly ended up with 90 arms, according to a 1965 study.
The family donated the body of the nine-armed octopus to a local museum so the public can see this unusual curiosity.
Read more: Barely 9-armed octopus found off the coast of Japan
Mass death
Thousands of dead marine animals, including octopuses, fish and starfish, are washed ashore on the remote Russian peninsula of Kamchatka. The culprit? A mass poisoning event. Even surfers bothered about it, saying they felt a slight burn in their eyes after entering the bay.
The deaths may have wiped out up to 95% of the animals in Kamchatka’s Avacha Bay, a catastrophic event that is likely to disrupt the food chain in the area for the remaining animals, local researchers said.
Local and international scientists initially thought that human pollution caused the deaths when it started in early October. Since then, however, it has come to light that toxic algae could be the cause of this ecological disaster, the BBC report.
Read more: Dead animals wash ashore on a remote Russian peninsula. What is happening?
Go fishing
Man finds giant spider dragging his pet goldfish out of the pond https://t.co/DB5vQZckUc pic.twitter.com/XzIDZWovVkJanuary 2, 2020
A man was shocked to discover that his pet fish, Cleo, had met her end to an unexpected eight-legged predator: a spider.
Cleo lived in a pond near the man’s house. Apparently her assassin did too – a spider for nurseries, or a semi-watery arachnid that can walk on still water, dive below the surface to escape predators and even “fish” a prey that is many times its size is.
This nursery web spider dragged Cleo ashore, apparently for a fish-like feast. (We’m sorry, Cleo!)
Read more: A man has caught a spider eating his pet fish, and it’s scary
Trashy poop
A green turtle trapped in a just off the coast of Argentina, had a very upset stomach. How do we know that? This created heaps of human waste, including pieces of nylon bags and hard plastic.
The turtle probably mistaken this trash can with its regular prey, such as tortoises, seagrass and worms. The litter he ate took up space in his abdomen, which probably made it difficult for the turtle to eat real food and get the nutrients it needed to survive.
According to the Mundo Marino Foundation in Argentina, veterinarians gave the turtle medicine to help it poop, and the turtle recovered.
Read more: Green turtle rescued from fishing net removes all kinds of litter
Shark versus swordfish
Scientists were thrown for a lure when a dead thirsty shark washed ashore off the coast of Libya with a swordfish’s ‘sword’ in its body. Swordfish are known to be aggressive towards animals they consider to be threats (including some whales, sea turtles and humans), but it has never been documented that they attack thirsty sharks.
Thirsty sharks eat small fish and will not be a threat to the swordfish, the researchers said.
Perhaps the two fought over prey, the scientists said, although it is also possible that the stabbing was an accident.
Read more: The unit is solved when ‘sword’ is found in the thirsty shark
Greasy love
What do you get if you inadvertently cross Russian sturgeon with American paddlefish?
An unusual love hybrid – everyone says hello to the stone fish.
There are now about 100 of these strange hybrids in captivity, researchers announced in the journal Gene. Scientists do not plan to make more. The starfish originated when the team tried to help the critically endangered Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), a popular caviar supplier, reproduces. The researchers thought that American sperm sperm would cause asexual egg development in the sturgeon, but (as you probably guessed), this is not what happened. The sturgeon’s eggs fused with the paddlefish seed and hybrids were born.
Mazel tov!
Read more: Scientists accidentally create ‘impossible’ hybrid fish
Puppy-sized sea “pill bugs”
Do you remember that you were looking for pill beetles (or potato beetles or roller poles) when you were a child? Can you imagine a big one, as big as a puppy, hiding deep in the sea?
Like a pilgogga, this fresh animal is an isopod, and it is the largest recorded. Found and baptized in Indonesia Bathynomus raksasa (“rakasa” translates to “giant” in Indonesian), this isopod is about 33 centimeters long and is the first new giant isopod to be found in more than a decade.
Read more: Massive ‘Darth Vader’ sea bug pulled from waters near Indonesia
Marine stain
What looks like a party balloon but lives deep underwater? A new species called xtenophore Duobrachium sparksae it is related to comb gels.
Researchers spied on the strange creatures in an underwater gorge off the coast of Puerto Rico in 2015, but they only published the results this year. Every time D. sparksae (can we just call it ‘sparkling’?) moving, rows of its tiny hair-like cilia break light into a prism of bright colors, reports Live Science.
We hope Sparky has a wonderful new year, and you will too!
Read more: Newly found marine spot looks like ‘party balloon’ with two strings, scientists say
Originally published on Live Science.